Three individuals prosecuted in trade secrets theft case between two local travel platforms, KKday and Klook

　In the trade secrets dispute between two local travel platforms, KKday and Klook, Taipei District Prosecutors Office prosecuted CHEN Jun-Yang, CHEN Bo-An, and SUN Yi-Fen for violating the Trade Secrets Act.  In this case, CHEN Jun-Yang, who took up a new position as the senior vice director of Klook after his employment at a locally well-known traveling platform, KKday as a product manager, was charged with the offense of gathering KKday’s internal information and the vulnerabilities of KKday’s internal system and providing them to CHEN Bo-An and SUN Yi-Fen at Klook, KKday’s rival in the same trade.  

　According to the prosecution’s findings, CHEN Jun-Yang (hereinafter “Chen”), during his employment at KKday, was clearly aware of the competitive relation between KKday and Klook and also knew that KKday’s supplier back-end system maintained confidential information and trade secrets with economic value, including the information regarding KKday’s product items, quantities, period of sale, amount of cost, amounts of orders and total amounts, order analysis, etc. of KKday’s external sales.  Chen, however, divulged such information and trade secrets, including the vulnerabilities of KKday’s internal system, employee accounts, and default passwords, to CHEN Bo-An and SUN Yi-Fen.

　CHEN Bo-An and SUN Yi-Fen were suspected of illegally accessing to KKday’s supplier backend system since January 11, 2021 with the account numbers and default passwords provided by Chen and then stealing relevant trade secrets to formulate a plan to improve Klook’s supplier system based on the stolen information and present the plan to Klook’s senior management.  

　KKday later found that their trade secrets, such as, the names of their cooperative vendors, were stolen when conducting information security audit on November 30, 2021.  Thus, following their extensive investigation, KKday filed a report to the information security division of Investigation Bureau of Taiwan in April 2022.  The said division worked with KKday to examine the records of connection to KKday’s internal system and found Chen’s suspicion, and therefore, conducted search and questioned Chen in September of the same year.  
  
　Taipei District Prosecutors Office determined that Chen is suspected of violating Article 13-1, paragraph 1, subparagraph 1 of the Trade Secrets Act by acquiring trade secrets for use by wrongful means, and that CHEN Bo-An and SUN Yi-Fen are suspected of violating Article 358 of the Criminal Code by gaining access into another person’s computer by entering the password of another person’s computer account and password without reasons.  The prosecutors office concluded investigation on this case and prosecuted Chen, CHEN Bo-An and SUN Yi-Fen each accordingly.  (Released 2024.01.18)  
/CCS